A biblioteca universitária brasileira no contexto da pandemia: um estudo exploratório sobre o retorno das atividades nas instituições públicas de ensino superior

Abstract

In the period from 2019 to 2021, the world was intensely affected by the Covid-19 pandemic. As a consequence, the temporary stoppage of sectors considered non-essential affected libraries. With the advancement of vaccination, negotiations were observed for the resumption of face-to-face activities in many Brazilian federal universities. Thus, in this pandemic context, the following starting question was established: How did university libraries guide their decisions towards the safe return of their activities in person? An attempt was made to answer that question, through the following general objective: To situate how university libraries were represented in the biosafety protocols of Brazilian federal public universities for the safe return of their face-to-face activities. For its realization, the following specific objectives were listed: i. Map in the National Register of Courses and Institutions of Higher Education the public federal universities, which maintain university libraries; ii. Identify, among public federal universities, which ones have biosafety protocols that include content related to the return of university libraries; iii. Characterize the biosecurity protocols adopted by federal university libraries for the return of activities in the context of the pandemic; iv. Find out how university libraries are included in biosafety protocols and what is their participation in the document construction process. As for the methodological path, it is a research of an applied nature, with a quali-quantitative approach; considering the objectives, this is an exploratory study, based on documentary research, developed by consulting the documents involved in the process of resuming face-to-face activities of the analyzed university libraries: the biosafety protocols; as a technique and procedure, a questionnaire was developed and applied to the population consisting of librarians from 68 federal public universities. Data analysis revealed that of the 68 universities studied, 23 dedicated chapters or sections to their libraries in their biosafety protocols; 19 of them did not mention their libraries in their protocols; and, finally, in 24 of them the word library is only mentioned as another common area of the university, without, however, taking into account its particularities and needs; 21.7% of Central Libraries directors are unaware of the existence of the biosafety protocol created by the MEC and the same percentage created their own protocols for their libraries. The completion of this study points to the need for better communication between MEC and federal universities, as well as between them and libraries.